A fuss from the noisy miners drew my gaze to a tree on the edge of the park next to Balmoral Beach. Too wit, an owl, something red, messy and deceased in its claws, was ignoring the miners' protestations, to stare down the spectators with its one good eye. It seems out of sync with time of day, maybe even with a slightly hunted aspect, but that is the ambiguity of nature's predators. The head, strangely small for such a large birdy, gives the odd idea that the whole thing is a collage of feathers, claws and beak. Fortune favors the observant.

A fuss from the noisy miners drew my gaze to a tree on the edge of the park next to Balmoral Beach. Too wit, an owl, something red, messy ...

Yesterday, strolling to the beach, all at once I came upon a box of golden paperbacks, with a help yourself note.Not one to look a gift horse in the eyes, I pocketed an an old Penguin. on which I will report anon, and for more immediate fun the 1938 school classic, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and duly progressed through them at the beach. Maths being a story told only by number and operation, the less obvious ones give, albeit brief, moments of mental traction, the pleasure of filling in the story. This maybe a case of raising Ravens.

Yesterday, strolling to the beach, all at once I came upon a box of golden paperbacks, with a help yourself note.Not one to look a gift...

Like an aggregated botanical exclamation point, the cycad is emphatically exuberant in putting its best fronds forward. These graphically elegant set are no slouches on speed either, from yesterday to today, the remind that fronds waits for no time. Viola.

Like an aggregated botanical exclamation point, the cycad is emphatically exuberant in putting its best fronds forward. These graphically ...

Like Wordsworth's sister, all at once we came across a host of fluoro digging tools.
What would be par for the beach if seen in a single pair, this quiet riot of spades and buckets inveigles a disquiet, a singular sense of whimsy whooped up, an idea that this mise en scene is not so much an invitation to play but an invitation to think: Why? Perhaps it's the first of a sculpture in the sand series, a base camp to look at the dispersion of toys over time on sand, an invitation to construct a sand glass?

Like Wordsworth's sister, all at once we came across a host of fluoro digging tools. What would be par for the beach if seen in a si...

Falling, or might I say stalking, smack dabbers between those two hoary competitors, the chicken and the egg, the bird and its orbital origin, this one member of a small flock of similarly headless aves, suggest, in the no nonsense stride towards the sand, that maybe we are all a little parochial in our perspective. Sculptures by the Sea, maybe here is skulkers by the see.

Falling, or might I say stalking, smack dabbers between those two hoary competitors, the chicken and the egg, the bird and its orbital ori...

Like a visual merry-go round, a reverse of spinning out, this was base camp and summit for one of a set four coast totems from Caterwilliamson and Linda Matthews in Sculpture by the Sea (2104). Bravo, these just might be my favourites for their clever rearrangement of the horizontal plane, spun out into near meaninglessness, then coalesced into a reflected circular and upright image. The naming of t his process, anamorphisis - which makes complete sense once you take it down to its Greek constituents.

Like a visual merry-go round, a reverse of spinning out, this was base camp and summit for one of a set four coast totems from Caterwillia...

Perhaps the Cacau Cru mean to pivot on the ambiguity of whether their character is painting himself in or out of the picture but I like to think that this may be discreet advice on the perils of the selfie, a call for modest self-effacement and a certain level of anonymity.

Perhaps the Cacau Cru mean to pivot on the ambiguity of whether their character is painting himself in or out of the picture but I lik...

This an overlooked aside from the Keirle Park series, those once a week sketches in the car, cataloguing the to's and fro's, the oval walkers and dog ball throwers, the skater set, tennis players, aspiring football teams and slouchy sets of teens who smoked in cockie circles in the furthest corner, all playing second fiddle to the day's slide over into twilight, twilights' slip into the night. Here, that blur of lightened sky, brighter strokes that give the nod to sunset, the feeling you're in a car, going past, or is it the trees that travel?

This an overlooked aside from the Keirle Park series, those once a week sketches in the car, cataloguing the to's and fro's, the ...

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Curiosity Cabinet

As a child I thought there was a jewel box hidden in my parent's house, I imagined there was a cache of pink cut glass rings - the ones with adjustable soft metal sizing - laid out in pink foam in the nailed tight plyboard box in my brothers' walk-in robe.

Years later, I realised the box was really the back of the bathroom cabinet. I got a lot of enjoyment out of those pink glass jewels that weren't there. Imaginery treasures are curiously satisfying.

Here is a central point where someone who might be interetested can see what bits of words, some links to work published in journals and ezines, and images that I have made.

Absent Knowledge

We are talking about knowing certain facts,

and he says, I know all that or used to,

it is only that I can’t remember.

Is this not knowing or forgetting

what you know? Perhaps the head holds

a trace of what was there,

perhaps it is there but can’t find

the way out; maybe it was there but left,

or there was a rumour that it was coming

but never did,

like the promised holiday ,

in Pennant Hills. At eight years old

I would lie in bed at night a hardly contained

precipice of anticipation that time

would take me to Pennant Hills and a big house

with a swimming pool. I can see

the façade of the house, the curve

of suburban street, where that house

I never went to might be - or even was.

Though I know I never went, maybe

somewhere, there is an unborn memory

of being there, and I am thwarted by absent knowledge

from enjoying what I did not do.

Carol Jenkins

This poem was recently published in Voices from the Meadow Wollongong Workshop Anthology 2007 ( Five Islands Press)

Bambiraptor

The Going Down Swinging # 25 -special double CD edition has at last unwrappped itself in Sydney, with a lauch at the Last Bastion of Civilisation last Wednseday 25 September. I still don't know what is in this CD it apart from my spoken word poem Bambiraptor as I was incarcarated in an invention called Good Mummydom. I hope every one else had a good time at the launch party.

The fossil Bambiraptor’s importance in the evolutional of dexterity and the dissonant name gave me this rave by Blanche (Street Car Named Desire) - here she makes a play for Bambiraptor believing his tough and powerful persona is lined with tenderness, like Stanley. This poem is one of my bids to get fossils to colonise and take over the myth as the substratum of literature.